35
BEN
OCTOBER 1999
Daisy put me up to it. I’d run into her at Ray’s Pizza earlier in the night, and she told me she was working a shift that night at a bar off Fourth—Dive Inn—and told me to swing by for a beer. Amanda was at the hospital until eleven o’clock, so I figured what the hell. I buzzed Amanda, who said she’d stop over when she got off, then we could go crash at her place, which wasn’t too far, just a couple blocks over on Astor. Easier than me shooting uptown to my parents’ on the subway, which was unreliable at night, and besides, it was my parents’. Not exactly living the dream. But that had been part of the deal with my dad: he’d wanted me to be a banker or a lawyer or head to business school after Williams. Like the writing was on the wall with my liberal arts education, my major in English: that I wasn’t going to amount to much, at least by my father’s definition. My mom convinced him: pay for grad school, at least most of it, but don’t subsidize my lifestyle. I took out a small loan and landed at my parents’ doorstep, the ink on my diploma barely dry.
Leo still lived at home back then too, so it was like old times, only now he reeked of weed and had beer on his breath, but my mom pretended not to notice because he got by at Dalton and played on the football team, and also, he was the baby, and we loved him for it. That’s just Leo, we’d grown used to saying with a shrug. My dad indulged him because Leo did well enough to likely matriculate to Columbia, where my dad was occasionally a guest lecturer and had connections, and because Leo had a slight inkling of maybe becoming the banker my father had hoped I’d become, or maybe a lawyer at my dad’s firm.
“God help us if Leo’s ever the one to have to bail someone out,” I said to my mom one night last year, after Leo had swung down from campus to have her do his laundry.
“Benjamin, stop it,” she’d replied, folding his T-shirts. “Your brother has so much untapped potential . . .” She shook her head, pressed her hands on the cotton to smooth out the wrinkles. “He can do anything one day.” Then she added: “You too, Benny. You too.”
Daisy’s shift is ending, and my beer is getting warm, and Amanda hasn’t shown. There’s a pay phone in the back of the bar, and I debate trying the hospital but I know what she’ll say: Something came up. They needed me. I couldn’t help it. I’ll say, OK, I get it. I try not to take it personally, like my mom’s backhanded compliments.
“You look like you need to have some fun,” Daisy had said when she proposed the plan. “I’m running a bet with my friend. Stay until midnight, and when she asks for your phone number, refuse to give it to her.”
“Weird bet,” I said.
“Part of our acting process.” She scooped up a handful of pretzels and popped them in her mouth. “Helps us pretend we’re anyone but ourselves.”
“Actresses are very strange.” I laughed.
“You don’t know the half of it.” She untied her apron from her waist, waved over her friend, then passed the apron to her.
I spend the better part of the hour checking the door, swiveling my neck so often a muscle pinches. I should say something to Amanda, tell her how much it annoys me when she just goes AWOL, but I hate getting into it, the confrontation, the fights.
We met through mutual friends at a Yankees game two summers ago: a Goldman analyst buddy had been released into the wild for the night and his partner had given him the Goldman box—fifteen of us were invited. Amanda and I hit it off immediately: we were all hot dogs and kettle corn and cold beer for the three-hour stretch of the game. Every once in a while, she’d stop to look out on the field and yell: “Jeter, you’re such a little bitch!” but she was from Boston and a Red Sox fan, so I forgave this. Besides, her fiery attitude was perfectly in line with her red hair, her zeal. She was passionate about her med school, she was passionate about politics (we were in the midterm election cycle that year); it was only surprising that she was just as passionate about me. We took the subway home together, with everyone really, and when I went to exit at my parents’ stop, she said: “No, you’re not getting off here. Astor Place is your stop.” And so I abided.
But now it’s nearly midnight, and my neck hurts and my beer is flat and warm. I have promised Daisy that I’d stay until her friend, Tatum, who is wiping down the bar and shutting down some girl I recognize as the sister of an asshole I went to high school with, loses the bet.
“Bitch!” the girl yells at Tatum, who looks on with mild interest, the epitome of cool, not rattled in any way. I watch her for a beat, as that asshole’s sister falls off her stool and to the ground, and am struck by the fact that Tatum’s face doesn’t flinch for even the tiniest of seconds. I remember that asshole, how I’d be reading in the library and he’d come by and shove my book to the floor, and how I was dating Paige Brewer and he wanted to sleep with her, so he told me that she left her underwear in his locker. He’d taunt me, cajole me, and never once did my face not flinch, never did I shake him off so completely, like Tatum is able to shake off his sister now. She grabs her towel and wipes down the bar, and I wonder what I could learn from her, what she could teach me.
“I hope you don’t take her personally,” I say. “I went to high school with her older brother. I think being an asshole is genetic.”
She laughs at this, throws her head back like it’s the funniest thing she’s ever heard. I’m great at writing drama, milking emotion out of real life, but I’ve never been a comedian. Amanda never finds me gut-busting hilarious. Something needy swells in me. More.
“Free refill for you,” she says.
I wave her off, though not because I want to. I’m just trying to be responsible. I have an early shoot, and also she makes me uneasy, like I’m sitting here waiting for Amanda but want to be sitting here talking to her. I’ve never been disloyal, never even considered being unfaithful. I make a mental leap—to me unbuttoning Tatum’s shirt, kissing the nape of her neck—and then press it to the back of my brain. No.
“I don’t need another,” I say. “I’m on my way out.”
“You turn into a pumpkin before midnight?”
She’s closer now, and I can see how beautiful she is. Long brown hair tied up in a bun, sharp green eyes that probably veer toward hazel when the sky is overcast. She has a dimple on one cheek, a fan of freckles on her nose, not dark enough that she couldn’t cover them up, but tonight, she lets them breathe. I imagine, again, taking off her shirt.
“Nah, just . . . I have an early shoot tomorrow and the person I was meeting tonight never showed.”
“A shoot? I’m intrigued,” she says.
“Grad student.”
“Are you at Tisch? I’ve never seen you before; I’m there for theater.”
“I’m there for writing, MFA. You know, about to set the world on fire as the next big screenwriter.”
Shit. What a stupid fucking thing to say. Selling myself short, listening to the voice of my dad in my ear.
I add, “Or something like that. I don’t know, talk to my parents and they’ll tell you I gave up my very lucrative analyst position at Morgan Stanley for a graduate degree in film.”
“Banking boys are so boring. No wonder you quit.” She smiles and her dimple craters, and now I’m on to removing everything she has on, stripping her naked. “Eh, tell your parents to screw themselves.”
“I’m still living with them, so that’s a little hard.” Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Why am I saying all this? I play this off like I’m joking. Like I’m not sitting here exposing all of my shortcomings to the most intoxicating woman I’ve met since, well, since that Yankees game with Amanda.
“Yikes,” she says.
“Tell me about it.” I laugh, wave a hand, recover.
“Tatum Connelly.” She extends a hand, and I clasp it, don’t want to let go.
“Ben Livingston.” She winces when I do indeed hold on for a moment too long. “Sorry. Habit. Trained that way by my dad since I was six.”
“Fun childhood.”
“My dad’s only paying for grad school on the promise that I win an Oscar,” I offer, surprised to hear how quickly I share this confession.
But she grins and says: “So win an Oscar.” Like it’s nothing, like it’s not the finish line, the nearly unattainable triumph my father expects.
“Uh . . . OK.” I grin back because I like her breeziness, her candor. “Now you sound like him: ‘If you’re going to do something, Benjamin, you’d better at least be the best!’”
“There are worse role models,” she says, and something like sadness washes over her for a beat before she sheds it.
“I’m probably making it sound worse than it was.” I am. Mostly I love my parents, loved my childhood. No one is perfect; we all did our best. “You know, to make you feel sorry for me or something.”
“Fun childhoods are overrated,” she says, but then chews on her lip, lost in that same trail of thought that she doesn’t give me access to. “But why would you want me to feel sorry for you?”
“Oh, I don’t know, so when you get my phone number, you might take pity on me and actually call,” I say. Daisy kicks me from underneath my side of the bar.
“Come on,” she says, incredulous.
“Come on what?” I know I’m flirting now, in spite of Amanda, in spite of my previously unwavering loyalty. To Paige Brewer, to Melissa Thompson (college), to Felicia Hollis (also college), to Amanda.
“What makes you think I want your phone number?” she asks. “And even if I did want your phone number, why then wouldn’t I call? For your information, as a female bartender, I get numbers thrown at me all the time.” She’s rattled. I’ve been the one to rattle her. I picture her naked now, me beside her.
“Well, good, because I don’t hand out my number to strangers.” I grin. Daisy told me to drag this out for as long as possible, until after midnight.
“I’m not a stranger,” she says. “I’m Tatum.”
I want to say: I know. Now tell me everything about yourself because that won’t be enough. I want to consume you, breathe you, explore every inch of you.
Instead, I say, “But you don’t want my number, Tatum, so we don’t have anything to worry about.”
“Well, I don’t want your number, in fact.”
“Perfect,” I reply.
“Great,” she says. Then: “Well what if I do want your number?”
“I already told you: I don’t give my number out to strangers who scare me.”
God, do I want to give her my number.
“Something else you learned in your childhood?”
“They trained me well.”
“What if I’m not a stranger?” she says. “What if I tell you something about my own less than fun childhood that assures that I’m just Tatum, your local friendly bartender!”
“I’ll consider it.”
“I started working when I was twelve, have had a job ever since,” she says. “So, no fun for me.”
“Hmmm. Nope.” I try to shut that down quickly, worried she’ll ask me about my own work experience, which is shamefully lacking. A camp counselor for a summer, teaching racquetball for another. I’ve never callused my hands, never worried about a paycheck. Certainly never slung drinks for assholish NYU trust fund brats.
“Oh, come on,” she says. “Are you going to make me beg?”
“Yes,” I say. Please beg, please ask me to do whatever you want me to do. I’m sold. “I am going to make you beg. Very much so. Come on, give me your best begging face.”
Daisy clutches my shin, then pulls herself up to eye level, tears building, then spilling down her cheeks. She grabs my arm to steady herself against the onslaught of her laughter.
“What?” Tatum looks from her to me then back to her. “Were you, like, crouching underneath the bar? Listening to this the whole time? I don’t . . . what the hell, Daisy?”
Daisy catches her breath in sputters. Then finally: “Tatum, Ben, Ben, Tatum. And just so you know, you lost.”
They both look at the clock on the back wall.
“I’m aware,” Tatum snaps. “And he and I met. As, evidently, you did too.” Then to me: “I take it you know her?”
“Ben wrote a short about dating I did a few months ago,” she says. “I told him about our ongoing contest to get numbers at the bar, and he wrote it into the script.”
“That Women Are from Mars short?” Tatum asks, her eyes wider. “That won an award last semester, didn’t it?”
“I just wrote the script,” I say. “She starred. And the dude who directed it, another guy I grew up with, actually got the award.” More deflection, more slighting myself though I know better. Shut. Up. Ben.
“All you fancy Manhattan kids,” she says. “The next Scorseses. But you, don’t do that.” She squeezes my shoulder and a jolt of adrenaline rushes to my heart.
“Do what?”
“Dismiss any notions of greatness, act like you’re not worthy of winning some award.”
The adrenaline shoots all the way through me, straight to my cheeks. She’s read me so well, like I’m transparent, like she can see right into my guts.
“I’m serious,” she says. “Like, if that had been my film, I’d be standing on top of this bar, screaming about it with a microphone.”
I debate telling her to prove it, that if she’s so chock-full of bravado, she should jump up on the bar and prove it. But I don’t need her to; I don’t want her to. I want to savor this moment, her having my back, just for us. Our eyes linger for a beat, and then I remember: Shit. Amanda. I stand abruptly, fishing my wallet from my back pocket, sliding forty dollars her way.
“I should go; looks like I’m getting stood up.”
“Well, that sucks. And you don’t owe me forty bucks.”
“It’s midnight, and you lost the bet,” I say, suddenly embarrassed, like she thinks I’m some rich kid who is trying to do her a favor. I clarify: “A big tip—an actual tip, not a wise-ass tip from that girl whose brother I knew—is the least I could do. And anyway, I actually feel kind of bad about setting you up to lose. I really never do things like that.” I point toward Daisy. “She begged me. So I apologize, and please, take the tip.”
Daisy nods. “I did. It was too perfect not to. But yes”—she holds up her right hand—“I can attest that Ben is the rare breed of actually decent man who is not a total asshole. I’ve known him since we were kids.”
“Nice,” I say, hoping that Tatum will recognize the truth behind Daisy’s sarcasm, then hoping she won’t, because she doesn’t seem like the type who goes for nice guys.
“She’s not from here,” Daisy interrupts. “She’s only very recently become acquainted with New York men.”
“Ohio,” Tatum says with a shrug. “We breed only nice men in Ohio. Nice men who don’t trick us into losing.”
“Thus, the forty dollars.”
“Well, I don’t like losing.” She frowns, and the freckles on her nose shift into a new constellation, and I’m back to wanting to remove all of her clothes. “And I do like big tips.”
“No one really likes losing. And I think everyone likes good tips.”
“Are you making fun of me?”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. God, that is the last thing I intended. I’m like the five-year-old on the playground, poking fun at the girl he likes. But I don’t like her. I’m with Amanda. I try to recenter. “I swear, I am not making fun of you. And I have Daisy to testify that I am indeed a non-asshole New York guy who wouldn’t do that sort of thing.”
“We went to Dalton together,” Daisy says. “I’ve known him since forever.”
“I suppose that losing a bet and getting forty bucks is better than getting stood up, so my night is not quite as bad as yours.” Tatum shrugs again. “So fine, I will see your forty bucks and raise you a tequila shot. On the house.”
“I’m not sure if I’m quite being stood up . . . it’s complicated. My girlfriend’s in her third year of med school. I mean, I think she’s still my girlfriend. I can’t quite pinpoint when I last saw her, so . . .” I watch Tatum, wondering if she’ll betray any interest. She raises her eyebrows for just a glimmer of a second, and I tell myself that’s enough. It’s enough to hold on to for now.
“So I couldn’t have gotten your number even if I hadn’t been set up by my so-called best friend?” She smiles, and her whole face opens into something radiant.
“Hey, Daisy put me up to it.”
She downs her shot, so I do too. “Well, I guess you owe me one.”
“Well,” I say. “I guess I do.”